Why do Bigdad's designs of Tail and Rouge have own tags with miles_prowr_(bigdad) and mormoopia_rouge_(bigdad) ?
I'm fairly certain we don't give individual tags to characters just because someone made a different design for the same character.

demonthedarkhound said:
Why do Bigdad's designs of Tail and Rouge have own tags with miles_prowr_(bigdad) and mormoopia_rouge_(bigdad) ?
I'm fairly certain we don't give individual tags to characters just because someone made a different design for the same character.

We shouldn't be tagging individual unofficial designs of a character with a new character tag, and I guess people are starting to do the same thing with drawn characters as with modeled characters. They should be aliased away like the individual model tags (topic #45003 is still pending to start aliasing away individual designs/models).

watsit said:
We shouldn't be tagging individual unofficial designs of a character with a new character tag, and I guess people are starting to do the same thing with drawn characters as with modeled characters. They should be aliased away like the individual model tags (topic #45003 is still pending to start aliasing away individual designs/models).

Yea. I was confused, because as far as I can tell miles_prowr_(bigdad) and mormoopia_rouge_(bigdad) were added a lot a few months ago by a staff member and I thought I missed something. Probably just an oversight.

The bulk update request #9424 is pending approval.

create alias miles_prowr_(bigdad) (167) -> miles_prower (17931)
create alias mormoopia_rouge_(bigdad) (186) -> rouge_the_bat (24732)

Reason: Like Watsit said above we don't give unofficial designs own character tags.
There are also a bunch of tags for Bigdad's version of other members of the Sonic cast, but they have so low numbers that they can better removed manually. (You can see all of them on this post )

miles_prowr_(bigdad) -bigdad / mormoopia_rouge_(bigdad) -bigdad Was gonna say, wouldn't that be equivalent to having the artist tag with miles_prower?

We don't have those kinds of tags unless it's practically a new character, entirely. Like say, the copyright tag for various incarnations of some series. It's still just *character name* and separate copyright tag, though.

I feel like aliasing away fan-made designs for a character is probably not a great idea in general. I think, ultimately, it was a mistake that we did it with bowsette and it'd probably be a mistake here as well, if a character design is distinct enough to be recognizable the tag should remain.

dba_afish said:
I feel like aliasing away fan-made designs for a character is probably not a great idea in general. I think, ultimately, it was a mistake that we did it with bowsette and it'd probably be a mistake here as well, if a character design is distinct enough to be recognizable the tag should remain.

There were some arguments in the comments on the posts for making/keeping the tags, TBF.

I imported descriptions where I could, since almost all of them mention BigDad, anyways. Searching for *_(bigdad) -description:bigdad -description:"big dad" -bigdad should have few results, now. 9 out of 223 couldn't be found with those terms. To do better, you could search in comments, but this gets to point where maybe BigDad's AU itself should have a copyright tag? Making it part of the character names is bad, either way? They're too specific. Like, we don't have a Bugs Bunny tag specific to Space Jam.

Bowsette should probably be some meme tag.

alphamule said:
There were some arguments in the comments on the posts for making/keeping the tags, TBF.

I imported descriptions where I could, since almost all of them mention BigDad, anyways. Searching for *_(bigdad) -description:bigdad -description:"big dad" -bigdad should have few results, now. 9 out of 223 couldn't be found with those terms. To do better, you could search in comments, but this gets to point where maybe BigDad's AU itself should have a copyright tag? Making it part of the character names is bad, either way? They're too specific. Like, we don't have a Bugs Bunny tag specific to Space Jam.

I mean, we have tags for 99% of AU incarnations of Undertale characters (a few with implications). I don't know why we're fine with stuff like Toriel, but she wears an apron (sometimes) and the symbol on it is slightly different but Tails with different facial features and a unique outfit is aliased. I don't think that drawing lines where we're trying to draw lines makes sense.

alphamule said:
Bowsette should probably be some meme tag.

if a character has a design that's unique and recognizable enough to have people and/or characters cosplay as them, they need to just have a character tag.

dba_afish said:
I feel like aliasing away fan-made designs for a character is probably not a great idea in general. I think, ultimately, it was a mistake that we did it with bowsette and it'd probably be a mistake here as well, if a character design is distinct enough to be recognizable the tag should remain.

The problem is that gets out of hand fast, leads to layers of ambiguity the tag system isn't meant to deal with, and creates unnecessary confusion. Anyone drawing a character that happens to have a recognizable art style would then be eligible for having their own tags for every character they draw, and characters that already have a disambiguation suffix will need double disambiguation (e.g. dogzeela's "fan-made design" of Krystal being tagged krystal_(dogzeela), but Krystal is ambiguous, so which Krystal is it? and how would you disambiguate it to indicate both the character source and the particular design?). Given a tag like krystal_(charleyfox), how do you determine if this is a separate Krystal character owned by Charleyfox, or just a design of a pre-existing Krystal character they don't own?

On top of this, a lot of artists draw fairly loose interpretations of characters to begin with, they're not all on-model so where would the line be between a fan-made design and just some artist's drawing of a character? e.g. post #5102160 isn't how Mineru looks in the game, so when would it stop being foxialewd's drawing of mineru, and become mineru_(foxialewd)?

Further, this would basically lead to every alternate_species depiction of a character being labeled with a unique character tag, as making a character appear as a different species inherently results in a fan-made design of a character as that species (which we already have people trying to do, e.g. wolf_midna).

Additionally, it creates a disparity with different character form/design tags being treated differently. For example, presumably being a fan-made design of a pre-existing character, a hypothetical link_(uzucake) tag would also be tagged with the normal link tag too, since that's who the character is meant to be, which is different from how other alternate forms and designs are handled that shouldn't be tagged with the original character tag (e.g. toon_link shouldn't also be tagged link). Having alternate unofficial forms/designs tagged with both their own tag and the normal character tag would lead others to think alternate official forms/designs should be tagged with both their own and the normal character tag too, increasing the amount of mistagging. Unless these unofficial design tags should be treated the same as other official form/design tags and not be tagged with the original character, e.g. warfare_krystal should not also be tagged krystal_(star_fox) just as link_(wolf_form) should not also be tagged link, which would be it's own mess.

watsit said:
The problem is that gets out of hand fast, leads to layers of ambiguity the tag system isn't meant to deal with, and creates unnecessary confusion. Anyone drawing a character that happens to have a recognizable art style would then be eligible for having their own tags for every character they draw, and characters that already have a disambiguation suffix will need double disambiguation (e.g. dogzeela's "fan-made design" of Krystal being tagged krystal_(dogzeela), but Krystal is ambiguous, so which Krystal is it? and how would you disambiguate it to indicate both the character source and the particular design?). Given a tag like krystal_(charleyfox), how do you determine if this is a separate Krystal character owned by Charleyfox, or just a design of a pre-existing Krystal character they don't own?

On top of this, a lot of artists draw fairly loose interpretations of characters to begin with, they're not all on-model so where would the line be between a fan-made design and just some artist's drawing of a character? e.g. post #5102160 isn't how Mineru looks in the game, so when would it stop being foxialewd's drawing of mineru, and become mineru_(foxialewd)?

Further, this would basically lead to every alternate_species depiction of a character being labeled with a unique character tag, as making a character appear as a different species inherently results in a fan-made design of a character as that species (which we already have people trying to do, e.g. wolf_midna).

okay but like, there's a line. there's a line where tags _obviously_ have a significant amount of utility and it's well before these two characters.

watsit said:
Additionally, it creates a disparity with different character form/design tags being treated differently. For example, presumably being a fan-made design of a pre-existing character, a hypothetical link_(uzucake) tag would also be tagged with the normal link tag too, since that's who the character is meant to be, which is different from how other alternate forms and designs are handled that shouldn't be tagged with the original character tag (e.g. toon_link shouldn't also be tagged link). Having alternate unofficial forms/designs tagged with both their own tag and the normal character tag would lead others to think alternate official forms/designs should be tagged with both their own and the normal character tag too, increasing the amount of mistagging. Unless these unofficial design tags should be treated the same as other official form/design tags and not be tagged with the original character, e.g. warfare_krystal should not also be tagged krystal_(star_fox) just as link_(wolf_form) should not also be tagged link, which would be it's own mess.

honestly, I think the fact that link_(wolf_form) isn't tagged link is silly. and I also think the fact that we have a dozen slightly similar looking dudes, and the same number of slightly similar looking girls, who all have different designs and backstories all under link and princess_zelda with no differentiation outside like two cases is hella dumb.

dba_afish said:
okay but like, there's a line. there's a line where tags _obviously_ have a significant amount of utility and it's well before these two characters.

The line isn't obvious, it's vague and subjective. Would a different outfit count? A different color palette and/or body markings? Some people think warfare_rouge has a significant amount of utility, and some don't. Being able to point to extreme examples where one obviously doesn't qualify and one that obviously does qualify for a separate tag, doesn't help when the majority are much closer to a blurry line where there's a lot of disagreements. This can be doubly true when dealing with alternate designs of alternate designs, e.g. dogzeela making a design/model of krystal_(star_fox), then someone else modifying that design to resemble krystal_(dinosaur_planet). Would this be krystal_(dogzeela)_(star_fox)_(lolla4567)_(dinosaur_planet) or krystal_(star_fox)_(dogzeela)_(dinosaur_planet)_(lolla4567) or something?

dba_afish said:
honestly, I think the fact that link_(wolf_form) isn't tagged link is silly. and I also think the fact that we have a dozen slightly similar looking dudes, and the same number of slightly similar looking girls, who all have different designs and backstories all under link and princess_zelda with no differentiation outside like two cases is hella dumb.

Part of the problem is that a number of them are pretty similar looking, especially when drawn in an artist's own style, and often only distinguished by other elements of the image (e.g. Link being seen as BotW Link because he's with Revali, when there's nothing stopping the TP Link or Adult (OoT) Link from being drawn with Revali). For example, which Link is this? The source and artist doesn't say, and given his design being blended with Samus, it could be a number of them (BoTW/TotK Link, TP Link, Adult (OoT) Link, Zelda2 Link, etc). A "catch all" tag for any form of a character can really only work if it's done that way from the start (or when there's sufficiently few to go through to fix up, and get people to use the new tags), ensuring there's separate tags for all the known different forms/designs that people know to use, otherwise we end up losing the ability to distinguish what the one tag was for (if toon_link, young_link, link_(wolf_form), etc, are all also tagged link, there wouldn't be a tag to find or blacklist the older humanoid Link that the tag is currently for).

watsit said:
Part of the problem is that a number of them are pretty similar looking, especially when drawn in an artist's own style, and often only distinguished by other elements of the image (e.g. Link being seen as BotW Link because he's with Revali, when there's nothing stopping the TP Link or Adult (OoT) Link from being drawn with Revali). For example, which Link is this? The source and artist doesn't say, and given his design being blended with Samus, it could be a number of them (BoTW/TotK Link, TP Link, Adult (OoT) Link, Zelda2 Link, etc). A "catch all" tag for any form of a character can really only work if it's done that way from the start (or when there's sufficiently few to go through to fix up, and get people to use the new tags), ensuring there's separate tags for all the known different forms/designs that people know to use, otherwise we end up losing the ability to distinguish what the one tag was for (if toon_link, young_link, link_(wolf_form), etc, are all also tagged link, there wouldn't be a tag to find or blacklist the older humanoid Link that the tag is currently for).

we could have a bunch of tags imply link and then just use that for more generalized depictions and then use actual specific tags for individuals when it's clear (or when it's stated) that we're looking at Time or Sky or Twilight or The Four or, like, Koridai or whatever (and then we could have a separate tag for human Link if that's deemed necessary). this is how we already handle like pokémon formes and stuff.

dba_afish said:
we could have a bunch of tags imply link and then just use that for more generalized depictions and then use actual specific tags for individuals when it's clear (or when it's stated) that we're looking at Time or Sky or Twilight or The Four or, like, Koridai or whatever (and then we could have a separate tag for human Link if that's deemed necessary). this is how we already handle like pokémon formes and stuff.

It might've worked if it was done that way from the start, but by this point, people are too used to just tagging link for the non-child humanoid versions. If people don't know to use the new tags, we'll end up in the same situation regardless; everything implying link and posts with an older humanoid Link not having their own tag, making it harder to find or filter out. The same reason why multi-form pokemon only imply a base when it was made that way from the start (e.g. the shaymin forms have always implied shaymin), and not done to pre-existing tags (e.g. charizard not being implied by any mega or gigantamax forms, or creating a separate original form tag to free up charizard as a catch-all for all forms, because people will habitually tag just charizard for the original form).